Molly Brown's College Friends

“But then I’ll be too little to marry Dodo. You won’t trust your doll to Dodo, and if I’m so teensy maybe he might break me.”

“Well, then, I guess Katy’ll have to stretch you some. She done stretched the shirt mos’ a mile.”

“What do you say to taking a little walk?”

“I say: ‘Glory be!’ That’s what Kizzie, our cook, says when she’s happy.”

“Shall we take Dodo out in his carriage?”

“If I can put my dolly in, too!”

Dodo was awake and pleased to be included in this outing, if gurglings and splutterings were an indication of happiness. He and the doll were tucked safely in. Katy, who had been longing for the time to come when she could scrub the nursery, was delighted to be relieved of her charge for the time being.

“Where shall we walk?” asked Nance.

“Down by the lake! My dolly ain’t never seed the lake yet. They’s a little blue boat down there what my papa, the ’fessor, done say he gonter set sail in some day. He say he gonter go way out in the middle of the lake where th’ ain’t no little girls with curls to come tickle his nose in the morning. My papa is kind and good, but he sho’ do hate to have his nose tickled with curls early in the morning.”

The lake! How many memories it brought back to Nance! The blue boat might be the same one in which Judy Kean had her memorable midnight jaunt, or was it a canoe? Nance smiled at the picture that arose in her mind’s eye. It was their Junior year and Judy had gone off in a fit of jealousy and rage, and when she came to herself she was out in the middle of the lake while Molly and Nance rowed frantically after her. What a time they had covering their tracks to keep Judy from being found out and perhaps even expelled! Nance laughed aloud.

The sun was warm on that day in late March, almost like a southern sun. Dodo, lazy baby, had slipped from his sitting posture and lay flat on his back. He had the same characteristics as Mildred’s doll baby: the moment he lay down his eyes closed.

“Oh, what a sleepy husband I have got!” cried Nance. “Let’s camp out here, darling. I brought my knitting and while my little husband sleeps – ”

“And my doll baby, too!”

“You can play in that nice clean sand. Don’t go too close to the water.”

There was a stretch of beach at that side of the lake where a small pier had been built for a boat-landing. The sand was fine and white, a most delectable medium for houses or pies, whatever the young sculptor wished to create.

Nance seated herself on a nice warm rock while her little companion busied herself collecting pebbles for the castle she contemplated building. The sock grew under the girl’s skillful fingers while her thoughts were miles away from the poor soldier whose foot it was destined to cover. Dodo snoozed peacefully and no doubt the doll did, too.

“Look! Look! Aunt Nance, I’ve done found some kitty flowers!” cried Mildred, rushing to Nance with a switch of willow catkins she had found growing near the water’s edge.

“‘I had a little pussy
Her coat was silver grey.
She lived down in the meadow,
She never ran away.

“‘Her name was always Pussy,
She never was a cat.
‘Cause she was a Pussy-Willow.
Now what do you think of that?’”

sang Nance. “Now let me teach you that nice verse so you can say it to your father.”

Mildred obediently learned the poetry in so short a time that her teacher marveled at her cleverness and good memory.

“Now, darling, you mustn’t go quite so close to the water again. Aunt Nance will gather a big armful of the pussy-willows to take back to Mother, but you might get your little tootsies wet if you go too close to the edge. Then I’ll have to put you in the carriage with my husband and run home every step of the way.”

Mildred trotted off with assurances of caution. Nance settled herself to her knitting and her thoughts. What a boon this universal knitting has become to women who want to think and be busy at the same time! The girl’s thoughts were centered on herself. What was she to do with her life? The desire to teach had left her with the years she had spent nursing her father and mother. United States was on the verge of war – any moment it might be declared. That would mean the women of the land would be in demand just as they had been in Europe. There would be work to do, but what was her share to be?

This little breathing time with Molly was very sweet, but it could not go on forever. The time would come when she must take up life again. Her unruly thoughts would dwell on how different things would have been had Andy McLean not shown himself so unreasonable. She might have gone to the front with him. There was work in the hospitals in France for others besides trained nurses, lots of work! Cooking, cleaning, sewing, peeling potatoes, scrubbing floors – nothing was too menial for her. It would have been sweet to work near Andy, shoulder to shoulder in spirit even if he would happen to be the surgeon in charge and she a poor scrub girl. She might have been taking care of some of the war orphans. Minding little babies was her long suit, it seemed. A big tear gathered and spilled on the toe of the sock that was being so neatly finished off.

A shrill scream broke on the still air.

“I’m a-sinkin’! I’m a-sinkin’!”

“Mildred!” cried Nance, jumping to her feet.

“Never mind, nurse, I’ll go after her,” said a stern voice from behind her. “You had better look after your other charge,” in a tone which made no attempt to veil its sarcasm.

Dodo had awakened and was sitting up in the carriage reaching for the willow catkins. His position was precarious, as one more inch might have sent him headlong in the sand.

Nance dropped her knitting and grabbed the venturesome baby while the stern voice materialized into a tall grey figure with sandy hair who ran towards the water’s edge, skinning out of his coat and vest as he ran and in some miraculous way also divesting himself of his shoes. His hat he had already hurled at Nance’s feet.

Mildred had walked out on the little pier and decided that she would get in the pretty blue boat that her father considered such a safe refuge from tickling curls. It was bobbing about most invitingly in easy stepping distance.

“Won’t Aunt Nance be ’stonished?” the child had said to herself. “She’s gonter holler out: ‘M-i-i-l-dred! Where you Mi – ldred baby?’ an’ I gonter lay low an’ keep on a-sayin’ nothin’.”

She put out her little foot and set it firmly on the bow of the boat that was almost grazing the edge of the landing.

“My legs is a-gettin’ mos’ long enough to step up to the moon an’ stars,” she boasted.

But how strangely boats behaved! This one did not stay still as she had expected but ran away from her. Her legs had not grown nearly so long as she had thought and they refused to grow another bit. The boat got farther and farther away and the horrid little pier seemed to be moving, too, and in the opposite direction. The time came when Mildred must choose between land and water. She decided to stay on shore and with a mighty effort jerked her little foot from the unsteady blue boat. Three years going on four is not a period of great equilibrium. Fate took matters out of Mildred’s hands and kersplash! she went in the cold waters of the lake. It was not very deep so close to the shore, but neither was the little girl so very tall. By standing on her tiptoes she might have managed to keep her inquisitive nose out of the water, but the naughty blue boat came swinging back to her rescue and she clutched first the painter and then the side of the boat, screaming lustily as she clung.

The grey figure with the sandy hair ran lightly along the pier and with one swoop gathered the child up into his arms. He might have saved himself the trouble of taking off his coat and shoes, but he had seen the child as she fell in the water and did not know what would be required of him as life saver. Mildred was sobbing dolefully as she buried her wet curls in the neck of her rescuer.

“Your nurse should have looked after you,” he muttered.

“She had her husband to ’tend to,” said Mildred, “an’ I was a-keepin’ keer of myself. ’Sides she ain’t my nurse but my ’loved aunty.”

“Oh! And who may you be?”

“I’m Mildred Carbuncle Green.” The family name of Molly’s mother, which was Carmichael, was thus perverted by this scion of the race.

“And your aunt’s name?” asked the young man as he picked up his discarded coat and wrapped it around his burden.

“She’s Aunt Nance – ”

“Nance Oldham!” and he almost dropped little Mildred. “And you say she was busy with her husband?”

“Yessir! He keeps her busy mos’ of the time.”

The rescue and this conversation had taken but a moment. In the meantime, poor Nance had shoved her little husband back in the carriage and was rapidly wheeling him towards the scene of disaster.

She had recognized Andy McLean in the tall grey figure and sandy hair. The moment he had spoken to her so sternly she had known it was he. At that moment she envied no creature in the world so much as an ostrich. If she could only bury her head in the sand. Why should Fate be so cruel to her? Why should Andy McLean come back on her horizon at that moment when she was neglecting her duty? But then, she reflected, if he had not come back at that psychological moment either Mildred would have drowned or Dodo broken his neck. She could not have rescued both of them at once. Indeed, both of them might have been killed! The fact that the water was shallow and Mildred could have walked out of it was no comfort to Nance, nor did it allay her suffering and self-reproaches in the least to know that almost every baby that has grown to manhood has at one time or another fallen out of his carriage or bed, down the steps or even out of the window.

Andy McLean, too, was going through some uncomfortable moments as he held the dripping child close in his arms and made his way across the beach to Nance. There had never been a moment since he and Nance had parted that he had not regretted his hasty words; but what good were regrets? Nance could not have cared for him or she would have felt that at her father’s death he was the person to whom she must turn instead of that Dr. Flint. As far as he could see, there was no reason under Heaven why Nance should not have married him immediately. He knew nothing of her mother’s determination to give up her public life nor of her decision to remain at home for Nance to nurse. He had not yet learned of Mrs. Oldham’s death, as he had arrived at Wellington only the evening before, and Mrs. McLean, with a wisdom sometimes granted mothers, had not mentioned Nance’s name to him, much less the fact that she was even then visiting the Greens.